India keeps lid on video of Kashmir

India keeps lid on video of Kashmir

Thursday 7 November 1991 19.01 EST
First published on Thursday 7 November 1991 19.01 EST

A short news video containing allegations of horrifying torture by Indian troops in Kashmir has been withheld from circulation.

The 13-minute video was made for Eyewitness, a monthly news magazines on tape which has become a popular alternative to the abysmal government television service.

All such magazines have to be submitted to censorship, and are regularly cut or amended. In the case of the Eyewitness video on Kashmir, the censors have passed the buck. It has been referred to the ministries of home and external affairs and, even more disturbingly, to the Indian army. Without their approval, which is thought highly unlikely, the video will never be shown.

By Western standards, the Eyewitness piece is hardly a scorching indictment of Indian policy in Kashmir, where for nearly two years security forces have fought an ugly counter-terrorist campaign against Muslim separatists. But the video does include two sickening accounts of torture.

A shopkeeper, Manzoor Ahmed Naikoo, was filmed in his hospital bed, swathed in bandages and fitted with drips and drains to treat multiple perforations in his intestines, stomach, liver, and lungs.

He tells reporter Savyasaachi Jain what soldiers did to him: "After tying me down they removed my pyjamas. They tied some cloth round my penis and set it on fire ... Then they laid me face down. One man stood on my back. Another brought a rod and inserted it deep through my rectum. He kept thrusting it forward and back."

Another alleged torture victim, Muzaffar Shah, tells a similarly sickening story. He too has ruptured intestines, liver, and even lungs.

These interviews are followed by the bland comment of the Kashmir army commander, Lieutenant-General S. Nath: "There is no torture. We have given very strict orders to our interrogators that they will not use any third degree methods."

The video does not set out to expose brutality by the security forces. In the words of the Eyewitness reporter, it tries to explain that the perception of reality in Kashmir is very different from that in the rest of India.

For example, it is fervently believed by many Hindus that their brethren have all been intimidated out of the Kashmir valley by the bloodthirsty Muslim majority.

Many thousands of Hindus have fled the valley (as have thousands of Muslims), but the video includes interviews with other Hindus who have stayed, and who testify to good neighbourly relations with Muslims.